Calibrating Your Monitor - Adobe PHOTOSHOP ELEMENTS 2 User Manual

32 CHAPTER 2
Setting Up Photoshop Elements

Calibrating your monitor

Your monitor will display color more reliably if
you use color management and accurate ICC
(International Color Consortium) profiles. Using
an ICC monitor profile helps you eliminate any
color cast in your monitor, make your monitor
grays as neutral as possible, and standardize image
display across different monitors.
On Windows, you can use the Adobe Gamma
software (installed with Photoshop Elements) to
create a monitor profile. On Mac OS, you can use
the Apple
profile. Be sure to use only one calibration utility
to display your profile; using multiple utilities can
result in incorrect color.
About monitor calibration settings
Monitor calibration involves adjusting video
settings, which may be unfamiliar to you.
A monitor profile uses these settings to precisely
describe how your monitor reproduces color.
Brightness and contrast
range, respectively, of display intensity. These
parameters work just as they do on a television set.
The brightness of the midtone values.
Gamma
The values produced by a monitor from black to
white are nonlinear—if you graph the values, they
form a curve, not a straight line. The gamma value
defines the slope of that curve halfway between
black and white. Gamma adjustment compensates
for the nonlinear tonal reproduction of output
devices such as monitor tubes.
calibration utility to create a monitor
®
The overall level and
The substance that monitors use to
Phosphors
emit colors. Different phosphors have different
color characteristics.
The coordinates at which red, green,
White point
and blue phosphors at full intensity create white.
Getting ready to calibrate
Before you begin calibrating:
• Make sure that your monitor is displaying
thousands (16 bits) of colors or more.
• Set your desktop to display neutral grays only,
using RGB values of 128. For more information,
see the documentation for your operating
system.
Make sure your monitor has been on for at least
•
30 minutes. If your monitor isn't warmed up,
the colors it displays may not be accurate.
Calibrating with Adobe Gamma
(Windows)
The ICC profile you get by using Adobe Gamma
uses the calibration settings to describe how your
monitor reproduces color.
Note: If you're using Windows NT, some calibration
options documented here may not be available.
To use Adobe Gamma:
Start Adobe Gamma, located in the Control
1
Panels folder or in the Program Files/Common
Files/Adobe/Calibration folder on your hard drive.